These problems are not only interesting historically but they are valuable as illustrating the vagaries of the human mind and the difficulties with which the early investigators had to contend. They also show us the barriers over which we cannot pass, and they enforce the immutable character of the natural laws which govern the world around us. We hear much of the progress of science and of the changes which this progress has brought about, but these changes never affect the fundamental facts and principles upon which all true science is based. Theories and explanations and even practical applications change or pass away, so that we know them no more, but nature remains the same throughout the ages. No new theory of electricity can ever take away from the voltaic battery its power, or change it in any respect, and no new discovery in regard to the constitution of matter can ever lessen the eagerness with which carbon and oxygen combine together. Every little while we hear of some discovery that is going to upset all our preconceived notions and entirely change those laws which long experience has proved to be invariable, but in every case these alleged discoveries have turned out to be fallacies. For example, the wonderful properties of radium have led some enthusiasts to adopt the idea that many of our old notions about the conservation of energy must be abandoned, but when all the facts are carefully examined it is found that there is no rational basis for such views. Upon this point Sir Oliver Lodge says:
"There is absolutely no ground for the popular and gratuitous surmise that radium emits energy without loss or waste of any kind, and that it is competent to go on forever. The idea, at one time irresponsibly mooted, that it contradicted the principle of the conservation of energy, and was troubling physicists with the idea that they must overhaul their theories--a thing which they ought always to be delighted to do on good evidence--this idea was a gratuitous absurdity, and never had the slightest foundation. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that radium and the other like substances are drawing upon their own stores of internal atomic energy, and thereby gradually disintegrating and falling into other and ultimately more stable forms of matter."